Congratulations are in order to all of the organisers of Domainers Meet in Dubai. The conference concluded yesterday and I know that a lot of business will be conducted as a result. This good news is that there are plans in place already to run the conference next year.

From the moment I stepped off the plane at the enormous Dubai international airport I could feel the incredible surge of energy of a city and a country going places. It's hard to imagine that just forty years earlier and I would have been welcomed by sand dunes.....instead a bustling metropolis of amazing skyscrapers and spectacular architecture greeted me.

The tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa, stands out as a shimmering spire surrounded by an oasis of a manmade lake that contains dancing fountains which make the ones in front of the Belagio look tiny. Everything about Dubai speaks of grandeur and an amazing vision towards the future.

Likewise, Domainers Meeting is backed by a team that really believes in not just the physical expansion of Dubai but also the virtual. This theme constantly came through in the conference. It's clear that Dubai plans on applying the same amount of energy to domains and the Internet as it has to carving out the remarkable city in the physical.

I had the privilege of being the opening speaker and it was somewhat daunting as I stood looking across at the attendees. Why was this the case? Because I was standing in the sand dunes of the virtual Dubai and the people before me were eager to turn the sand into virtual gold. They were hungry to learn and apply the same levels of enthusiasm to domain names that they have applied to everywhere around us.